r hope from the newly-developed
manufacturing interests in the South. But this is delusive. The South
is essentially a rural population; the new industries will necessarily
be confined to a few localities, and will reach but slightly the wide
agricultural region, and will scarcely touch the Negroes. And more
than all this, these industries will only be importing into the South
the struggle between labor and capital, which so vexes us at the
North. Instead, therefore, of solving the old difficulties at the
South, they will add a new one.

The danger of a war of races is scouted at the North; it is not at the
South. This is natural. The North is not in immediate contact with the
danger; the South is. When the war of the rebellion was impending, the
North refused to believe in its coming; and when it came, one of the
wisest statesmen of the North, Mr. Seward, predicted that it would
"not last sixty days." No such delusion prevailed in the South. Many
of the best men there, nay, nearly all the border States, dreaded its
coming and held back as long as possible, but they were swept
into the flood they foresaw and could not avert.

Thoughtful men at the South now have no rose-colored views about the
Negro problem. They fear the impending conflict. With them the
supremacy of the white race is the settled point, but they see in the
growing numbers, intelligence and restlessness of the Negroes an
increasing danger that will only be aggravated by delay. Why should
not the North and South alike manfully face the question of a war of
races? What will it mean? What will be its end? If the whites and the
blacks of the South alone engage in it, the blacks will be
exterminated. Nothing less will meet the case. If the North mingle in
the struggle, it must be to help the whites or the blacks. If to help
the whites, that will mean the more rapid defeat and slaughter of the
blacks; if the North help the blacks and save them from destruction,
then we shall be worse off than we are now, the two races will be
together with enmities aroused a thousand fold!

But why not face the more hopeful question: Is there a remedy? There
is! The teacher and the preacher, the spelling-book and the Bible, the
saviours of men, the reformers of society, the uplifters of races, are
spreading over the South. They go to the manufacturing towns--the
Birminghams and the Annistons--they go to the large cities with their
common and normal schools, their medical,